Selling words for thoughts for money
photo by: thorinside
Quite often, while surfing the internet and reading different pages, I have stopped and wondered why do so many people feel the need to write lengthy phrases in order to make a simple, often times trivial idea, intelligible.
I thought that it might be the complete lack of any writing skills, or the lack of intellect. Or perhaps it is the desire of earning money by doing nothing. Often times however, they were all combined.
Similar to book authors, there are two types of web publishers: those who write for the subject’s sake, and those who write for writing’s sake.
The first type of publisher has had thoughts or experiences which to him seem to be worthy of communicating, while the second type needs money and consequently writes for money. The writer writing for writing’s sake needs to spin out his thoughts to the greatest possible length because he sells words; and the ideas he often presents have half-true, forced thoughts, as foundation. His writing also contains evasion, because he wants it to appear what it is not.
As a consequence of the above, the writer writing for money writes for the sake of filling up the page. And as soon as you, as a reader, sense that, you should stop reading that nonsense, for time is precious.
There is nothing an author should guard against more than the apparent endeavor to show more intellect than he has. Doing it rouses the suspicion in the reader that he has very little, since we humans always affect that which we don’t possess.
Not only in philosophy, but in almost all other areas, the true writers (the ones who think before they write) try to express their thoughts as purely, clearly, definitively and concisely as ever possible. The cheaters copy, twist, spin, dilute and kill any value their source might have had.
Writing for money, in a bad style, means a stupid or confused mind; it doesn’t have anything of value to communicate. For the sake of your time and intellect, if you are reading such materials, you should stop.
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Well said.
One contributor to sloppy writing I think is the advice to ‘write as you speak’. This can be helpful to develop a feeling of intimacy. But it can also lead to ill-disciplined waffle.
I’m glad we agree on this, Evan.
Well put Armand, I’ve also seen my share of devious bloggers, that spin and regurgitate ideas all over again, mostly bad one, just for the sake of producing regular “content.” The end result is a blog with no real value, it’s filled with loads of bogus. Luckily I can easily spot the not and quickly go about minding my own business, but still they’re wasting my time.
That’s precisely it, Tibi! The regular content ‘tip’ is literally pushing most people into ‘creating’ absolute nonsense with no value whatsoever.
Blogging is too free and competitive for its own good.